Jenny Jarnagin

Singer-songwriter and pianist Jenny Jarnagin at Lala's Argentine Grill in Studio City

Jenny Jarnagin 

At Lala’s Argentine Grill
11935 Ventura Blvd., Studio City 

“Los Angeles is amazing. You can get any type of food you want, and the restaurants are so good,” begins Jenny Jarnagin. ”A friend who grew up in Argentina brought me here for the first time, and it was a special day. Every time I’m back in L.A. I come here to sit on the patio, watch people, ponder life – the songs I wrote, the business I did, the people I met – and just take a breath. This is the only place that has become a tradition, and it’s always the last day that I’m in L.A. that I sit here to reflect and take in L.A. one more time.”

The Phoenix-based singer-songwriter and pianist and I are at a restaurant that has become her L.A. haunt, Lala’s Argentine Grill in Studio City. It’s too hot to be out on the patio today, so we sit at the bar. Since it’s lunch time, the place is packed, and we are still able to do a fair amount of people watching as we talk about all of the exciting things happening in her life: a new EP, Heart Percent, releasing Sept. 9, a show at Old Towne Pub in Pasadena Sept. 30 and shopping L.A. studios for her next project.

“I was trying to sleep in this morning, but there were helicopters right above the house that were loud and hovering for a long time. I just learned what was going on: Chris Brown is a neighbor, and there was a situation with a woman and police. Isn’t that crazy,” she exclaims. 

Jenny realizes that even with all the crazy there is plenty of good about the city, too.

“The last time I was here at Lala’s, though, there was a stranger that bought another stranger’s meal, which was really cool,” she smiles. “I’ve come here before and just had a glass of wine, but it’s still morning for me today, so I’m starting with coffee.”  

Lack of sleep is nothing new for Jenny since the single mother of two is constantly balancing her home life and music career. She travels to Los Angeles at least once a month to meet with her management team, Mike’s Artist Management/Funzalo Records, and co-write songs with other artists.

“Lately I’ve also been shopping studios for my next project. There’s strong potential for my next album being recorded out here with a notable producer, so I’m super excited,” she shares. “Sometimes I play shows here, too. I just did one at Genghis Cohen, and I’ll be back with my whole band Sept. 30 to play the Old Towne Pub in Pasadena. It’s the first time I’ll have my full band out, so I’m sure it will be fun. It feels so good pulling into L.A. and getting here, but it also feels good to go [laughs]. I keep busy at home, too, constantly sending out vocal demos and staying in communication with people here.”

Driving out to Los Angeles from Phoenix is time alone that the busy working mom savors.

“Sometimes it’s nice to be able to have some solitude – just music and my own thoughts. I love to listen to all kinds of stuff, my background is pretty eclectic. I grew up playing piano by ear and was a church pianist by the time I was 7, so I love gospel, blues and pop music. I also studied classical, so I appreciate that, too. I have a really vast range of music that I enjoy, it really depends on the mood,” she tells. “Since I love to write pop music, I listen to a lot of Top 40. You can sing along and listen to what they do, how they write it, the beats they use and how they phrase things. A lot of people say pop music will dumb you down, but there actually is an art and a craft to writing a great pop song.”  

As she sips her coffee and nibbles some bread with Lala’s addictive chimichurri dipping sauce, I notice a portrait on the wall that features a redhead who bears a bit of a resemblance to Jenny. We giggle as I snap a photo of her next to that painting and in front of massive wall art depicting a couple in the midst of a passionate Argentinian tango.

Two Argentinian transplants, Horacio Weschler Ferrari and Mario Balul, opened Lala’s original location on famed Melrose Avenue in 1996 and quickly gained a reputation for a great dining atmosphere and succulent grilled meats.

“Everything is really good here – the meat!” Jenny offers as we peruse Lala’s menu that is full of traditional Argentinian favorites like a chorizo sandwich, a fruity glass of sangria, Flan con Dulce de Leche and their famous grilled chicken entrées. Today she opts for the Griega salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, red onion, black olives, red and green bell peppers, feta cheese and house dressing), while I decide to try two spinach, cheese and onion empanadas. 

We place our orders, and Jenny tells me a bit more about her childhood. She was born in Oklahoma, but her family immigrated to British Columbia, where they still reside. Although Jenny referred to playing piano by ear as she grew up, she neglected to reveal that she was only 3 years old when she started to play.

“My mom always wanted a child who played piano, so she prayed and prayed for one. My sister is the oldest and is very stubborn: She went through six piano teachers in a year and quit. I have two older brothers, but they didn’t take to it, and I’m the caboose,” she says. “We happened to have a big player piano that the previous owner had left in the home, and I just started playing it. I think it’s a blessing [she laughs]. Musicians, we’re a strange type, so that’s what my mom got with me. I was the kid in the basement spending hours at the piano because I loved it. I started with nursery rhymes and church songs – whatever I would hear I would play.”

Jenny started formal piano lessons at age 5, but the habit of learning songs by ear was a hard one to break for the mischievous youngster who fooled her teacher into believing she could read notes for two years. When she was finally caught, she says going back and learning everything by sight reading was “torture.”  

Although none of her immediate family members were musically inclined, her mother provided constant support. She sent Jenny to study at the Conservatory of Music in Victoria every summer and took her to see every musical performance possible. 

“We lived in a small town in British Columbia, but my mom would take me to almost every act that came through town: the symphony, rock ’n’ roll, backwoods hippie bands. Whatever was in town, she would take me. Isn’t that awesome,” Jenny gushes. “I had an eclectic group of friends who were more artsy, so in junior high when most people were listening to Pearl Jam or Green Day, I was discovering Simon & Garfunkel, Deep Purple and a lot of progressive rock bands. I always thought I should have lived in the ‘60s and ‘70s because that’s my favorite genre of music. You’ll hear a lot of stuff in my music, and what’s confusing to people is the back catalog because I’ve done 10 albums before this EP, and they’re all different in style. That was one of the hard things: trying to find my voice and identify what Jenny Jarnagin sounds like. It’s been a journey to try and find my stride, but I think I’m there.”

Once she became a teenager, she was so good on piano that people would ask her to teach their children.

“Teaching is something that I’ve always done and enjoy while I’m doing it. The income is nice, but it’s not my first passion. It is rewarding in its way, to see kids develop those skills, become better and get so excited at their small successes. I’ve had students for eight, nine, 10 years go to high school then college, and it’s cool being part of their lives, watching them go out into the world,” she admits. “For a while when I was studying music, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, so I just kept going to school.” 

Jenny majored in piano performance at Texas A&M University, and spent a “life-changing” summer at the Conservatory of Music in St. Petersburg Russia. After graduation, on the way back to British Columbia, she dropped by her parents’ winter home in Phoenix, and ended up never leaving Arizona.

“I stopped to see my mom, but within a week I had a job at a girls prep school because they needed a pianist for their music program. I stayed a little longer, then I met my ex. I feel like my whole life I’ve been trying to get back to Canada, but it just never happened, and now I’m pretty content with where I am. I realize that I can’t necessarily do what I’m doing if I was up in Canada since my dad is a farmer, and my family lives off the Alaska Highway in British Columbia where it’s beautiful but isolated,” she confesses. “Here in L.A., you’re in the thick of it. I love the music scene in Phoenix, but it’s small. There are great musicians, bands and more music venues opening up, but I know someone who has been playing the same wine bar for 30 years, and that’s what made me make the jump to L.A. If I have the opportunity, I’m going to take the chance, spread my seeds here and watch them grow.”

She has continued to push herself academically, obtaining a master’s in Music Education at Northern Arizona University, as well as musically.

“I’ve always known that I was meant to do music in some way or another. It wasn’t until I started writing pop music six years ago that I knew I hit what I was supposed to do. All the natural talent, the love for pop music and the training came together and made sense to me. I always knew I could write, but it wasn’t until then that I ended up diving in,” she recalls. “I didn’t sing until I started writing pop. Six years ago I wrote my first piano instrumental album, and I told the producer I was working with in Phoenix at the time, ‘I have these pop songs, but maybe you can find a singer to hire.’ I played the songs and sang them for him, and he said, ‘Nobody sounds like you. I think you’re the singer.’ That’s when I started singing, and I love it. It fits and feels good to sing. At shows with my full band, I’m out from behind keys a lot of times. At first it was strange but liberating because at some of the high-energy shows, I feel trapped behind the keys when I really want to connect with the audience, move and speak to them.”

When it comes to writing lyrics for her songs, Jenny finds it’s best to step away from her keyboard.

“If I’m sitting at a piano, a few words might come out with a rhythm and then I’ll get a melody going, but usually I have to really hone in and focus on the lyrics because they’re harder for me. Once I get the melody in my head, I go away from the piano and work on lyrics,” she says. “What I do a lot in Phoenix is go to a coffee shop and work on lyrics because I’m removed and can really think about what a song should say.”

Our lunch arrives, and Jenny divulges a little secret as we enjoy the crisp salad and delicious empanadas.

“When I’m here in L.A., I’m mostly working, making the most of the time, but the other day I was supposed to write with somebody and I was tired and felt zero inspiration, which is not like me. So I called the co-writer to ask if she would mind taking the day off. I went to the beach! It was awesome, and now my batteries are recharged.”

Thankful for little moments of ‘me time,’ Jenny has a lot on her plate since the Heart Percent EP releases this Friday. The title is such a unique phrase, so I ask her where it comes from.

“I recorded a bunch of songs and chose five to go on the EP. There was one song that was going to be on it in the beginning but ended up not making it, called ‘Own It.’ The song talks about buying into a relationship: Are you 100 percent in? How much of your heart are you going to give? How much do you care? The heart percent was an idea that bubbled out.”

One track that did make the cut is Jenny’s current single, “It’s Not Right,” and the song has strong meaning to her.

“My sister is 10 years older than me, and not only did my mom pray for a kid that played piano, my sister prayed for a baby sister. So we’re really close, and sometimes I use her ideas in songwriting. One day she had an argument with her boyfriend at the time where he had turned everything around on her, and she ended up apologizing. She said to me, ‘I didn’t really do anything wrong, and it’s not right to not be me. I just want to get back to being me.’ It’s interesting when you’re in a situation that changes you into something you’re not, and you wake up one day and realize you’ve become something you don’t want to be,” Jenny says. “I think a lot of people can identify with that. I know that I’ve been through circumstances even being an artist, feeling the pressures of society like, ‘You can’t do that. You’re a mom, why would you think you’re a pop artist?’ When you take a risk, people can put you down, so the song pinpoints the pressures that you feel being different, doing your thing, and how people will try to keep you so you’re more like them.” 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my lunch date with Jenny Jarnagin, it’s that this hard-working artist has no fear when it comes to pushing herself or boundaries that others may try to force upon her.

“It’s my hope that my music can motivate people, speak to them or make them feel like somebody understands them. I want my music to bless people’s lives and mean something to them. It goes both ways, when someone really likes a song that I wrote, it feels so good. It’s give and receive,” she concludes. “I would love to do a tour across Europe playing shows. It’s amazing how many doors music has already opened up for me – the places I’ve gone, experiences I’ve had and people that I get to meet. It’s such a cool way to experience life through that lens.”

The Heart Percent EP is available Sept. 9. Jenny Jarnagin performs Sept. 30 at Old Towne Pub in Pasadena. For more information, visit jennyjarnagin.com.

Sirsy

Sirsy's Melanie Krahmer and Rich Libutti at Wurstküche

 

SIRSY

At Wurstküche

800 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles (Downtown) 213-687-4444

Laughter is contagious whenever spending any amount of time with Sirsy. The Upstate New York-based duo of Melanie Krahmer and Rich Libutti have been performing and writing songs together for 12 years, so it's no wonder that they share such an amazing rapport, and once you're around them it's easy to fall right into their habit of exchanging witty banter with one another.

"I slip just a tiny bit of drugs into his coffee every day," jokes vocalist, drummer and flautist Melanie of her longstanding musical partnership with guitarist Rich. "We really try to respect and listen to each other. We also bust each other's balls nonstop, so it's good."

I was able to witness quite a few playful exchanges between the two when they met me at Wurstküche on the day of their first L.A. show at the Viper Room last week. With its long wooden tables and benches, exposed brick walls and beamed ceilings, the gastropub – known for its German sausages and extensive list of imported beers – has a sleek yet welcoming vibe, conducive to gathering to catch up with a group of friends or getting to know your table neighbor.

Melanie chooses a British soda, Fentimans Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger, to drink, while I go with an L.A. one, Reed's Spiced Apple Brew (homemade ginger ale with apple and lemon juice, honey, herbs and spices), which tastes just like apple pie. Being a beer aficionado, Rich is in his element and opts for the Floris Apple Ale, a Belgian wittier fermented with apples.

"It's really good," he offers, after taking a sip. "I love to go to different places and try everything when we travel, especially with the craft beer explosion. We hang out more and relax on the road. When you're 'self employed,' chasing your dream—"

"You feel guilty if you're not working the whole time," Melanie finishes. "We give ourselves more time to relax and enjoy a beer when we're on tour than when we're at home. I don't drink a lot of beer, but I am really into Lindemans Framboise, a Belgian Lambic. It tastes like fresh raspberries."

Wurstküche is the perfect location for Sirsy to get to know a unique section of Los Angeles since its located in the midst of the Downtown Arts District, filled with artist lofts, cool boutiques and cafés and an ever-changing array of street art murals. Since this is Melanie's first trip to the City of Angels and Rich has only passed through on his way to San Diego several years ago, I ask what they are interested in doing during this trip that's part of their first tour of the southwest in support of their fifth album, which released in March, Coming Into Frame, via Funzalo Records.

"The cheesy touristy thing is to go look at stars on the Walk of Fame, so we're going to go do that today," Melanie replies. "I've actually always wanted to go to the Viper Room, so I'm really excited that we're playing there."

"As we tour in different cities, we often go to places that are iconic in TV and movies, so we'll take a look at the Hollywood Sign," Rich adds. "In Dallas we went to Daley Plaza where JFK was shot."

"We do things you want to check off your bucket list while you're in that city," Melanie continues. "We saw the magical side of space travel on this trip, when we spent some time in Roswell, N.M. We went to the International UFO Museum, which was fun."

Aside from the usual Hollywood spots, Melanie has also been able to experience a favorite pastime of many Angelenos, shopping on Melrose Avenue. She shows me a skirt she found at American Vintage for a steal and admits that thrift shops are a frequent pit stop whenever they roll into a new city.

"It's really fun to go into those places; you never know what you're going to find," she says. "I got one of my favorite skirts in a thrift store in Asheville, N.C. I was looking through a rack and saw a Yoda skirt. This girl makes recycled clothing from scraps of material, so this was a skirt made from four different scraps and one had Yoda from Star Wars on it. It's literally a one-of-a-kind item. You get a little bit of the personality of the town from these local shops."

Although Melanie is vegan, there are several options for her to choose from on the Wurstküche grilled sausage menu. She orders the Vegetarian Smoked Apple Sage, and Rich gets the Sun Dried Tomato & Mozzarella with smoked chicken and turkey. My favorite item is actually the Belgian Fries, which are twice fried and served with one of their delectable dipping sauces that range from the spicy Chipotle Ketchup, creamy Bleu Cheese, Walnut & Bacon, savory Sundried Tomato Mayo and the Sweet & Sassy BBQ.

Sirsy plays over 200 shows a year, so they spend an inordinate time on the road and have of course developed some habits over the course of their 12 years together.

"This is actually not a very secret guilty pleasure that Rich has: He enjoys really cheesy music from the '60s and '70s, and he's made a five-hour 'driving mix' that he forces everyone to listen to in the van while he sings at the top of his lungs. If you see our band live, you'll notice that Rich doesn't sing, and there's a reason for that, which will be reinforced if you ride in the van and listen to him sing 'if you like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain' at the top of his lungs," Melanie laughs.

"I might have tortured everyone on the way here from Tucson with my guilty pleasure," Rich admits and then divulges Melanie's on-the-road guilty pleasure. "She wears an assortment of shoe wear as most women do, and on long rides she likes to take those shoes off and put on these fuzzy socks that are soft so she can relax."

"I usually put my feet up on the dashboard and recline. That's true, I do that," she confesses before sharing their usual habit as a duo. "One of our favorite places in New York City where we go every time we're in town is a little falafel place called Mamoun's. Even though it's 2013, somehow you can get an entire meal there for $3. Every time we play in Greenwich Village we go there."

Rich grew up in Rhode Island, while Melanie was raised an hour outside of Albany, and they had distinctly different musical upbringings. For Melanie, the first time she heard the Beatles' Abbey Road, her life changed. She also loved Thriller by Michael Jackson and older jazz artists like Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James.

"My family liked music, but there weren't any musicians in my family. When I was a freshman in high school, the person who sat behind me alphabetically in homeroom the first day was this guy Steve, who actually became my best friend. He said to me very early on in our friendship, 'I play guitar. You should play bass so we could meet girls,'" Rich remembers with a laugh. "So I begged my parents to buy me a bass, and we didn't really accomplish the girl thing."

"Unbeknownst to them they were both nerds, so that was the flaw in their plan," Melanie interjects. "Unlike Rich, I grew up in a very musical household. My father is an amazing piano player, so my first instrument was voice because I used to sing along with him. Then I learned to play the piano. In the fourth grade, they make you choose an instrument, and I really wanted to play the saxophone. My mother said, 'Saxophone is $600, and the flute is $200, so you will be playing the flute.' My mother's very supportive, but they were broke. That's when I started playing flute and had my illustrious career as a band geek. I was in drama club and sang in school plays. I've always been pretty musical and it's always been what I wanted to do. I think RIch wanted to be an astronaut."

"There's no jobs for astronauts though anymore, so I went this way instead," he chuckles. "When you're a kid, your parents tell you that you can be anything you want – President of the United States, an astronaut. Then when you're applying to colleges they say, 'You can still be whatever you want, but maybe you should major in something that you can get a job with. As a musician, you face a life of making no money, so I went to school for Biology, toying with the idea of going to med school. I always had many interests but music was always that one underlying thing. It was always there as something that I liked."

"It's a blessing and a curse when you're a good student because when you're a nerd, people expect you to go into a brainier career. Music, being in a rock band, was not traditionally thought of as a brainy career, but it's where my heart has always been. I thought that if I wanted to do music as a career I had to be a music teacher or something more traditional. I didn't think I could be a performer and songwriter as a career that was always my dream," Melanie concurs. "I was actually pre law, then I had this eye-opening experience. The fourth class I went to, they said the required text was the Great Dialogues of Plato, and I was like, 'what am i doing with my life? I don't want to do this.'"

"I had been in a bunch of different bands, but it wasn't until I started writing songs with Melanie that I felt that music was a realistic possibility," Rich recalls. "We worked really hard at it, to the point where we both petered out of serious jobs. It's been eight or nine years since we had any other job. We've been out there pounding the pavement touring."

"We started playing music together, and the first time that it really hit me was looking into a crowd of people and seeing a bunch of people I didn't know singing along to a song that we made up. That was amazing," Melanie remembers. "We would get an e-mail from a fan saying this song changed my life, and there's nothing like that in the world. That's it for me, the fact that we're able to connect with people and change their lives in some way. It doesn't get any better, even if we're broke for the rest of our lives, it's worth it."

Rich and Melanie began as a two-piece, playing acoustic music but writing indie rock tunes. They wrote and released three albums – Baggage (2000), Away From Here (2002) and Ruby (2004) – and  hired more band members to translate the songs to stage. Unfortunately they were never able to find the right mix, and

"It's really hard to have a cohesive sound when you keep going through band members, but it's also really hard to find two people who are as insane as we are and want to live on the road, play as many shows and basically not have a life outside of the band. That's where the two us, where our hearts have always been so it's not a sacrifice for us to do it. We lucked out and found each other. When we write and play songs ,we generally are on the same page. We tried but never really found that with anybody else," she tells. "After going through many changeovers, we just said, 'Let's go back to a two-piece and play all of the instruments ourselves.'"

So ever since 2006, she has played a full drum kit on stage while singing and shared bass duties on a keyboard with Rich (who plays the keyboard with his feet). The released their first effort as a duo, Revolution, in 2007, working on every single aspect themselves, from building a studio at Rich's house to recording and producing. With their fifth full-length, Coming Into Frame, they pushed themselves even further by expanding their recording horizons by working with a pair of award-winning producers, Paul Kolderie (Lemonheads, Buffalo Tom, Uncle Tupelo) and Sean Slade (Radiohead, Hole, Dresden Dolls, Pixies).

"Working with Paul and Sean, who have worked with some of our favorite artists, we already knew that we trusted them going in. They came and saw us live, so they got our vibe," Melanie says. "They said they wanted to capture the live energy that we have on stage. They noticed that when we played one song live there was a peak when it sped up and was exciting. They said we shouldn't record it with a click track, that we didn't need to use a metronome."

"In a Lady Gaga/Katy Perry world of music production, everything is very structured and rigid, mathematically laid out and Auto-Tuned, and we didn't want to make a record like that," adds Rich.

"I don't like to use Auto-Tune on my voice. If I can't sing it in tune, then I shouldn't be singing it, and that was their philosophy, too, on the record. We were breaking all types of rules, but we were able to capture more of us live," Melanie says. "They used a lot of our production ideas, taught us so much and really made us grow. It's our best album because of them. I like to think that we got better as songwriters, but a lot of it came fem working with them."

"Also, we wrote way more songs than we ever have. We wrote 25 songs, and 10 made it on the CD. In the end it's the 10 that we're most happy to have on there," Rich says.

As Sirsy has made their way across the country debuting songs from Coming Into Frame, Melanie says that the first two songs on the album, "Cannonball" and "Lionheart," have been going over well because they're full of energy and fun. There are two other tracks from the album that really move audiences as well and hold special meaning to the close-knit musical pair.

"I don't share this very often, but I actually went through a battle with breast cancer while we were writing the album, so 'Brave and Kind' and 'Gold' both came from that place. When you go through something like that, it just comes out of you, so I think that's why they speak to people," she says. "I've had several people come up to me after shows and say 'That song 'Brave and Kind,' I went through this and this, and that song, it's me, how did you write that?' It's neat for me to take something that's a life struggle, learn from it and be able to make a song that speaks to other people. That's pretty special for me."

Coming Into Frame is currently available. For more information, visit sirsy.com.